Chu: Enough about Solyndra already

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has just about had it with House Republican accusations about Solyndra and other clean-energy companies that won billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees.

"After hundreds of thousands of pages of documents sent over, there's not any whiff that this was a politically influenced decision," Chu told reporters Tuesday shortly after wrapping up House committee testimony on the controversial program. "That's true of all the loans."

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Chu's frustration was apparent after spending more than two hours before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee answering pointed GOP questions concerning his handling of more than $14.5 billion in stimulus-funded loan guarantees.

Earlier in the day, Rep. Darrell Issa's panel released a blistering report claiming Chu had "turned a blind eye to the risks" associated with many of the companies applying for the loan guarantees, putting billions of dollars in taxpayer money in jeopardy.

During the hearing, House Republicans peppered Chu with questions about a "revolving green door" of current and former Obama administration officials and campaign fundraisers who have connections to the stimulus-funded loan guarantee winners.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked Chu whether his decisions had been influenced by several specific people tied to the administration, including former National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers, who before joining the White House worked as a part-time managing director at D.E. Shaw, a New York-based investment firm that has an ownership stake in the Kahuku Wind project.

Chu replied that Summers’s connections to the Hawaii wind farm had nothing to do with it securing a $117 million loan guarantee in July 2010.

The DOE chief also had similar replies when asked about Commerce Secretary John Bryson, who before joining the administration sat on the board of directors at BrightSource, which won a $1.6 billion loan guarantee in April 2011 to support the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System in California’s Mojave Desert; Nancy-Ann DeParle, a deputy White House chief of staff for policy who served on the board of directors at Noble Environmental Power, the owner of the Granite Reliable wind energy project that won a partial $168.9 million loan guarantee last September; and Michael Froman, a deputy assistant to Obama and deputy national security adviser who worked at Citigroup, a major investor in SolarReserve, winner last September of a $737 million loan guarantee.

"There seems to be a pattern,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “There's so many names on this list. I just want to know personally what are you doing to follow through on our concerns that these people are personally financially benefiting from the decisions that they're in positions to influence people when they have major financial gain on the upside of these loans.”

Chu responded that all of the DOE loan guarantees got greenlights based on their merits and without White House involvement. The DOE chief also said he hadn’t referred any of the specifics to the department’s inspector general, though he said he'd ask the DOE general counsel to review whether any of the officials breached a “firewall” designed to stop such conflict of interest concerns.

"We will look into this," Chu told reporters after the hearing. "But again it's easy to raise something and say, 'Oh, by the way, this person had a connection to that company.' Then there's a big leap to say we funded the company because of it."

Chu noted prominent Republicans and GOP donors have ties to some of the stimulus winners. But he also noted, "It's not relevant to what we funded and that's the bottom line."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 3:59 p.m. on March 20, 2012.